Digital Download/Illegal Download

Adding to this: you don't have to use their software to download individual tracks, but they seem to require it if you're buying a whole album at once (+cover art etc). Doesn't bother me though, because if a whole album was worth buying, I'd just get it in hardcopy anyway. Digital download is best for just buying individual tracks.

 

After having tossed ~$30-35 in sales on Steam since Black Friday I feel the same way. Awesome getting a lot of Indie titles for cheap like Darwinia but I don't fully trust I will have access to this for eternity. Steam could just decide to revoke my account and I'd be out all of the games I am legally entitled to be able to play without a refund.

With a CD I know I can find a way to play the game - even if every copy of Windows 95 disappears there will always be a way to play StarCraft as long as you have the data.

 

GOH "I support them but I won't buy their stuff until they get 75% of profit. Until then, they get ZERO of my dollars."

...so you don't support them

 

Nothing is free... including music. It all costs money to be made.

 

Then you're never going to buy mainstream commercial music again, becasue that's never going to happen. I'm all for supporting the artist, I'm full aware about how they get screwed, but the music industry is an industry, out to make money. If you really don't want to support greedy record corporations (and I stand behind you 100% of the way) then stick to small companies and artists that sell their own material.

But for getting mainstream commercial music corporations to give 75% to the artist? Dude, in your dreams.

 

In a general sense I do prefer to be legal over illegal. That doesn't mean I won't torrent though. I may download things I have bought but I will also download things I may intend to buy too. It doesn't matter to me that my action is illegal at the time, only that sooner or later I become legal as and when I am able to. Last year I had the odd Killers song in my YouTube playlist. Then when I could afford it I went and bought all of their albums on the same day from HMV. Job done as far as I'm concerned.

Be weary of digital licences as they can, have and will be revoked or the terms and conditions of use can change on a whim. It is better to own a disc + keep the receipt to hand like inside the case and rip and export it under fair use to whatever you desire as the rights in this instance is unlikely to be altered or revoked.

Lastly without DRM you are really not going to be able to tell the difference between an Amazon or non-Amazon track An MP3 is an Mp3. Unless they do something to alter it you're not going to know any different, but in this instance the file itself is irrelevant.

 

The actual thing that you buy did not cost anything, mind you. You download something - ok, I would agree to pay for the bandwith and a minimum fee for the artist. But as it is now (99c a track) it looks like a ripoff to me. 14$ is pretty much the same price you had to pay for a CD, only difference is you don't get one and the publishers don't have to make & distribute it. Only the price stayed the same.

Then again, prices for indie games on steam et cetera seem fair to me. It's essentially the same, but games on steam usually don't cost 40$ like a disc-game in a store.

 

If it truly did not cost anything, it would be a lump of 0's and 1's and nobody would give a shit. It is indeed the data you are buying, and it is what is protected by copyright laws.

I'm paying between $2.00 and $3.50 per track in WAV format. This is cheap as balls compared to paying 1100 yen per 12" (and having to take my time to go to the store and buy it). It was usually only one good track and one turd, too! I'm pretty sure the max the label (not artist) gets these days from dance music sites is about $.85 but don't quote me on that.

Agreed, but it's still economics. They're not going to give the shit away for free. There still way more costs involved than simply bandwidth and production. Infrastructure for the site and advertising for the album for one... and of course they have to offset all the dick heads like GoH who never pay for shit b/c the companies should be paying them.

 

$14 bucks a CD? Please... try $25 - $30 new. Please keep in mind before CDs came along people were paying this much for cassettes and records. And yes, they were bitching and moaning about it back then also.

The average artist makes something like 45 cents per CD sale, and that's someone big time like Madonna. Most artists lose money. They'll give you an advance (say, $50 grand) which seems like a lot, but then they charge you up the yin-yang for recording, promoting, printing fees, etc. Back in the day when a record got broken in transit and sent back to the presses, the record company would deduct that from the artist's fee. The majority of successful acts out there make more money from touring, ticket sales, and merchandise (t-shirts, posters, etc) than actual record sales.

By contrast, if an artist makes say 8-25 cents from a 99 cent digital download, they are in fact getting a larger share of the pie then from CD sales - by far larger. So really if you want to support the artist buy digital downloads.

And really, 99 cents a song is a "rip-off?" So what's not a rip-off? 50 cents? Ten cents?

Nah, I don't agree. Someone who pirates music wasn't going to pay for it anyway, so really you can't say that record company "lost" that revenue. They said the same thing when blank tapes first went on sale.

 

Not all of them, no, but some yes. It is an economic principal that has been around for ages, which covers loss of product between the manufacturer and retailer. Regardless of how accurate the forecasts are, it is a very real thing, and an estimate is calculated into the entire process.

 

Of course it's not much, but what I get isn't much either. The download marketing isn't a market of trading anymore, if you buy music online you don't get anything for your money but the practical value. I think it's pretty hard to determine a price for the practical value and for me 1$ a song is far beyond that. I want something for my money - I'm not moaning about the price, if a great CD boxset costs 50$+, okay, but an assortment of mp3's for 50$? And no way to sell if afterwards? Nothing to look at on the shelf? Nothing at all but a license to use something that is basically non-existent except for the time I use it.

Not worth a cent to me.

The only thing that might be worth supporting the download market is the artist support that you mentioned. But then again, I don't feel like I have enough money to support some artists who earned more in 2010 than I will over the next 10 years. I know there are many people who don't have a problem with buying MP3's, purchasing dozens of iPhone apps a month or reading eBooks and comics on their iPad, it's ok, less competition for me on the used physical media market

 

Not in the single instance, but that doesn't mean that record companies don't lose money from the fact that music is available for free.

It's the same deal, regardless of what the data represents - if something that people want can be distributed on the internet then it will be distributed for free. It's idiotic to say that every single download means a lost sale, but it's equally daft to say that every single person who downloads it wouldn't have bought it had it not been available for free.

I'm not defending the music industry, if ever an industry deserved a kick in the fucking arse it's that one, but that doesn't change the argument. There's a lot of bullshit rhetoric on both sides, to be honest.

Outside of the mega-stars, you'd probably be surprised by how little band members earn. Most of your favourite bands probably don't earn anything substantial; the millionaires in the music world usually aren't playing the instruments.

 

I think it's funny how some people who pirate media do so and then bend over backwards trying to justify it to themselves (and others)...I just admit to pirating media, have done so for over 20 years and will continue to do so. I'm not going to justify it, I know it's illegal, but I still choose to do it. I don't pirate what's inconvenient to pirate, or what either requires hardware hacking or paying someone to do it, so for example I didn't get into PS2 piracy until it became fairly easy to do so. (I do own plenty of legitimate PS2 games as well, due to this, so the mere fact that I run OPL on my PS2 means nothing by itself).

I also don't generally discuss things about piracy (other than in a meta sense, such as this) where such discussions are not welcome. You also won't change my mind, as I understand quite well the issues concerning copyright infringement.

Just thought I'd put this out there, as I'm all the time seeing people saying "oh, the music/movie/game industry is shitty/greedy/corrupt/etc and so I pirate to show them! hur hur hur!". If you feel that way about the media industry and want to show it, then you don't use their media at all, and the more people who do so and be vocal about doing so, it drops mental "market share" and would eventually raise some big red flags that couldn't be swept under the big rug of "piracy" by the rights holders.

If you download shit illegally, it's because you want free shit, and any unashamed pirate knows this.

 

Well, I am happy to pay a fair amount for vinyl and CD's if they offer me something for my money. 25 Euro for a Battles vinyl is cool. But 25 Euro for 25 tracks by the Battles, no, and if the band would get 99c of a dollar. Support is nice, but if feels like wasted money to me and my personal opinion is that buying something should leave a nice feeling behind, not a bad taste like you just lost 25$ on a traffic fine.

Like with any of my posts, it's just my personal point of view. I don't care who I support, I am a consumer. If publishers want to be supported, then sell me a nice product and I'll support them. Like that Pier Solar-game for Mega Drive: The packaging is outstanding, absolutely stunning. I am happy to pay 35$+ for it. The consumer is important and I think some companies forget about that a little, now that the value of a license is all what music has become. Maybe it's just the consumers who forgot about it themselves, how fortunate for the publishers.